Finishing the Song
October 21, 2000

I wasn't really looking for a connection between events in the Middle East and Yizkor, but it came into my thoughts anyway. I suspect that whether or not we are supporters of President Clinton, we feel his disappointment at having worked for seven years to bring peace to the Middle East, coming as close as anyone has ever done, closer than anyone ever expected, including the Israelis and Palestinians, only to face the reality that he will not see its fruition in his term of office.

Not only a presidency comes to an end that way, but so does life. How many families have told me, as I met with them in preparing for a funeral, similar stories of dashed dreams? A wife will say, "My husband worked hard for years and years and so looked forward to his retirement. We built a home in Florida, we started taking short vacations there. Then as soon as he retired, he got sick and never lived to enjoy that golden years of his life.

Another illustration. In mid September, I arrived at our synagogue to find a subdued family gathered for a wedding they were to celebrate in just a few hours. I learned that a beloved grandmother had died the night before. She had looked forward to this simcha with such enthusiasm. She bought a wedding dress and shoes so that she would look her best. She had her hair and nails done. She was already for the simcha, but missed it by hours.

Another incident occurred a day after Yom Kippur. I happened to see the widow of a colleague and she looked particularly upset. I know that she has never really recovered from the premature death of her husband a little more than a year ago, so I began our conversation with a easy opener. "How are things going?" She said, "I am very depressed. I sat in the synagogue during the holidays, and I couldn't help thinking, ‘my husband put so much effort into building up this congregation, and he never saw the completion of his life's work.'"

All these stories make the point that life is terribly uncertain. Therefore, do as much as you can every day you live. Enjoy all the simchas you can in your family and among your friends. Work hard to accomplish all your goals because you don't know how much time you have. This message is a good one, a pertinent one, and worth repeating often. But it is not my only or even my main thought for this morning. Because the issue is not just making each day of life count, but recognizing that no matter how many days of life a person is granted, they are never enough.

The fact is that President Clinton worked as hard as any human could to bring about peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Nonetheless, he won't see it accomplished by the time he leaves office. And while that is not death it is the end of a presidency. Grandmothers and grandfathers live to be 90, an age undreamed of when they were born, and yet they still miss the wedding of a grandson, the bat mitzvah of a great-granddaughter. There are rabbis who serve the Jewish community well for fifty years, and still their work is unfinished.

No matter how many the years of a person's life, they are never enough. That is why people get offended when you say to them, "Well at least your father was 90 when he died." He may have been, but even at 90, his children still looked forward to one more seder with him, his grandchildren to one more visit, his wife to one more anniversary.

The greatest Hebrew poet of modern times, Hayim Nachman Bialik, wrote this poem:

There was a man,
And, behold, he is no more . . .
All too soon the music of his life was hushed.
Surely, one more melody he had within him.
But now that melody is gone.
Lost.
Forever lost.

No matter when a person's death comes, you look at the life that was lived and you say, there was still one more song and now it is silenced. That is the tragedy of life. Our last day on earth comes before our life is finished. And so those of us reciting Yizkor today are mourning the premature severance of a connection - one that we were not back then nor even today fully ready to see ended. We yearned to hear just one more song from our beloved mother or father, husband or wife or grandparent, perhaps even a child.

But is death the end of the melody. Is it lost forever, as Bialik wrote in his poem. Or do the songs live on? Personally, I like to believe that you and I sing the songs left unsung by those we remember this morning. Don't the dreams and aspirations of our loved ones go forward through us? Some of us had parents who came to America to realize the American dream. Yet, they may not have been able to fully do so. But we here in this sanctuary have brought it a bit further toward fulfilment. We received the education they lacked. We achieved the financial success they could only dream about. We took their business and raised to a new level of achievement.

Vice-presidential candidate, Joseph Lieberman, always mentions in his campaign speeches that his father drove a bakery truck. His son has now attained a status that is beyond what his father could have ever envisioned for his talent offspring. The dreams of parents and grandparents are borne by us. We are finishing their unsung songs.

Not only are we singing the ones they never had the opportunity to fully voice themselves, but, hopefully, also the ones they did sing in their lifetimes and that they held most dear. I said to the congregation shortly after my father died this past April, that my father was pleased throughout his life to see his sons carrying on his religious traditions. During his eulogy for my father, the rabbi told this story. My father was in the hospital just a brief time before he died. On one of those days my father looked down at his arm and noticed the tube for the intravenous fluids and medications he was receiving. It reminded him of the tefilin which go on the arm, and he inquired of my mother, "Did I put on tefilin today?" It was something my father did in the morning - and I do, too. My father and I shared many of the same melodies. We both loved the traditions of Judaism. Hopefully, you, too, are singing the melodies your mothers and fathers loved to sing and hopefully your children and children's children will also. Those melodies link each generation of Jews to all those that have passed.

Yizkor is a time for remembering our loved ones and for reflecting upon their ideals and goals, their longings and aspirations. At the conclusion of the Yizkor we recite the kaddish. Kaddish is a sacred and beautiful prayer. It is in praise of God. But, above all it has become a pledge. The living stand up to declare that they will carry on the good work, the religious traditions and cherished dreams of those being remembered. It is a pledge also to bring closer to fruition the dreams they left unrealized. The melodies sung by our mothers and fathers, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and the melodies that were silenced by their deaths are our precious heritage to carry into the future as we seek continuity for our loved ones and immortality for their ideals and visions.